Oh, Blogger Where Art Thou???

Diary

Where have i been?  Well, i can confirm that i am, in fact, alive.  Though only because i sleep.  If i didn't sleep i may have been shot last week.  No, i'm not kidding.  I woke up last Saturday morning for a sip of water to find plaster all over the floor beside my bed and contaminating my water.  At first i thought something mysterious must have fallen out of the ceiling, but the next day i noticed a hole in my painting and, behind the painting, a hole in the wall.  A bullet hole.  At level with where my head would be if i was standing up.

Here, have a look:

the wall

the back of the painting

the front

the ceiling (above my bed)

The neighborhood i live in is Bedford-Stuyvesant, which, for those of you unaware, has had a dicey history of race riots, ghettoization, and been subject to racist red lining by banks unwilling to grant loans and mortgages to blacks, leading to a precipitous decline in home value and all the terrible decline that comes with it.  However, like Harlem, many parts of Bed-Stuy have recently been gentrified and the area has been been on the upswing.  The part of town i live in is very quiet and relaxed with beautiful tree lined, brownstoned streets.  It's all very Sesame Street and i have always felt very safe here; it's been a respite from the pummeling noise and frenetic pace of Manhattan, where i work.

So, i've tried to laugh it off.  I'm pretty sure it WAS just a fluke.  But i still find myself thinking all sorts of frightened, paranoid thoughts.  I mean, here i am, a drop of milk in a bowl of raisins, living in a room with windows overlooking the Gates Ave projects and i start to think crazy, vaguely racist things like, 'what am i the whitey in the window for target practice?' and now when i walk around i can't help but feeling acutely out of place.  I can't help but wonder if my presence is resented.  I can't help but fear that my head will be shot off when i get up to go the potty at 2am.  This is what fear has wrought.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not holed up in my closet in a bulletproof vest or anything.  My experience is tame compared with what others i know have seen, heard, and experienced.  Like my friends who were mugged at gunpoint not a far cry from here, like the gunshots i heard outside their apartment in Crown Heights or the man shot on the next street over from them in front of three police cars.  This is the big city, kids, and i'm lucky that i slept through the shattering of my naivety.  Some plaster in my water is a small thing, after all.  I've ingested worse.

Typical Day

Diary

So far as i can tell there's no such thing as a typical day in New York City.  I imagine that only ladies who lunch and agoraphobics have managed to safely insulate themselves from the cacophony of events and influences buffeting this pulsing city.  For those of us lucky enough to dive daily into said pulse no day is typical.  Picture it if you will: early afternoon, a summer hot day in September and i'm huffing and puffing my way down one of those lovely, surprising little anachronistic thoroughfares below 14th St., late for work and worried about it, furrowed brow guiding me, swiftly marching forward, pushing my way past commuters left and right only to be halted by the sight of an angel and something in my heart swooned at the sight: crown of curly golden hair, marble skin, ethereally blue eyes and, not but a second later, suddenly an erection fills my vision, an erection pressing itself against the inside of dark gym shorts belonging to one incredible specimen descended, i imagine, from Achilles himself (yeah that Achilles, the one with the heel trouble), said specimen striding right towards me and behind him, lo and behold, a midget.  That's right: a midget.

Then there are the really strange days.  Riding the perpetually crowded 6 train, rocking out to a particularly rocking bootleg version of Iieee, and all at once a commotion at the packed end of the train (over what i can't tell) and i hear a voice (after i take off my headphones, of course): "I am the Earth Angel.  I am an angel of the Earth.  This is a not a joke.  Men, please stand back, only women may be near or you will run the risk of past life regression and your heart will be faint in your chest.  I am the Earth Angel."  Craning my neck on my way out of the train i glimpse him and he looks like Danny Devito with a mullet, playing an Oompa Loompa (yes those Oompa Loompa Doompity Doos of Willy Wonka fame), carrying a long white card, bordered in red and painted with rune-like characters.

When i get to work Milton is sitting outside and asks me have i seen Sharon (my co worker)?  I say no; he says someone stole her bag and she chased after him.  Now one of the only things i love about the restaurant is that it closes 3 - 5pm.  It's 3:30 at this point and usually the place is dim inside, white socked feet sticking out from booths and shining in the darkness beyond the sunlight (nap time, how charming).  No feet today though, today there's been a theft.  Some bum had taken Sharon's bag into the bathroom, she saw him come out with it and set it down: 'what were you doing with my bag?', she stops him on his way out, she's pawing through her bag, discovers her iPod is gone: 'where's my iPod?', he runs, she gives chase and two customers join her, they catch him, iPod is retrieved, police never come.

Meanwhile, i go to change into my work clothes and my backpack is gone.  This is more annoying than costly, i wished him well with my sweaty, masala reeking clothes, my apron with pens and a wine key, and the stick of deodorant that i'm sure he'll find useful (if i may draw the worst possible conclusion of his personal hygiene without ever meeting him).  And then i had to take the damn train home during rush hour, change clothes, and take the damn train back again (i don't normally refer to it as the 'damn train', but at the time i did).  Later my bag was discovered in the bathroom trash (why hadn't i thought to look there?), missing only the apron, which i'm glad he found empty of cash.  I hope he was very let down at the discovery and i also hope he had to smell and touch my dirty socks digging through my bag.

Three Things I've Learned About New York

Diary

1. Go before you go, unless you enjoy public urination, which i don't (not that there's anything wrong with it!).

2. Don't speed walk on the metal grates when it's raining.  They're slippery, cold, and hard and the puddles nearby are dirty and wet.

3. If a strangely dressed, sleepy woman with a leathered face asks you the time on the train, ignore her.  If you answer her she will then obsessively ask you every five minutes for the time in what will appear to be an ill-conceived, pathetic attempt at human contact that will make you feel very uncomfortable.

Is November 4th Too Late for a Halloween Blog?

Diary

It wouldn't have been a gay bar i was in Halloween night unless some silly homo held up the coat check queue fifteen minutes to strip down to shiny pink underwear adorned with a powdery pink, puffy bunny tail adhered to the rear and secured with suspenders.  He wouldn't've been a true homo either unless he capped the look with a bunny ear headband, plucked from his purse and prissily propped upon his head.  And, of course, it wouldn't've been New York unless he had thrashed about while stripping and digging around his bag, flinging elbows into my face and chest, forcing me to press backwards into the winding line packed into the tomb-like hallway behind me.

Shoshi tells me that here in New York people lose the boundaries of their personal bubble after a while.  I wonder if i could ever lose mine.  It just doesn't seem possible, even though i've already officially lost half of my winter accessories somewhere in Central Park by now.  Actually, she says 'you just get used to it'.  Again, i question whether this is a possibility for me.  I imagine the removal of my boundaries will require something a bit more than forgetfulness ('oops where'd my boundaries go?') or acclimation (i'm not, after all, just slipping into a pool here).  I imagine my boundaries will be sucked away by the wind-tunnels whipped up by the twenty or so trains that churn past headed uptown as i stand, sweating, waiting for one single, stupid train to stop by and finally take me downtown to my station so that i can almost wet myself between the station and home.  So while i'm happy to report that after nearly two months my spatial boundaries are hanging on strong, i can't help but wonder if i'm behind schedule.  Is it merely a matter of time before they desert me completely?  I really can't say, but i do hope they stick around although i also hope Shoshi's wrong that you're destined to leave New York in exasperation if your boundaries don't adapt.  I do love it here even if i can't relax as other New York gays can in bars with the elbow room and ambience of cans of vienna sausage.

So, i spent fifteen minutes in line, ten dollars at the door, and another fifteen minutes waiting for bunny boy to finish his not so quick change so i could check my bag.  All this to spend twenty minutes being jostled around in what seemed less like a crowd than a sea of sweat and appendages before desperately shoving my way through the crowd to escape.  To be fair though, i did get to enjoy the sight of three hard pricked porn stars dressed as demons bumping and grinding each other on a stage the size of a soap box, their erections peaking out of their waistbands, threatening an unexpected, though likely not unwelcome, moisturizing treatment to the tiny crowd salivating two feet beyond the 'stage'.  Add to this the sight of three guys getting serviced on the second floor landing and it's probably fair to say i got my money's worth though maybe it wasn't worth the wasted minutes of my life.

A lot of trouble could've been avoided had i not been carrying my bag.  And i wouldn't've been carrying my bag if i hadn't been stuck at work, or as i like to call it, my own private corner of Indian food hell, for the first part of the evening.  But i was and i had been, which is to say that work officially ruined my first New York Halloween not only because of my bag, but also since i didn't get to see the famous Village Halloween Parade.  Although, considering the steadfast and vigilant nature of my as yet to be compromised safety bubble, being stuck in a swarming crowd probably would've ruined my night anyhow.  I mean, even Shoshi, whose bubble is fully shrunk, recoiled in disgust when i suggested attending the parade.  'I'd rather die', is, i believe, what she said.

The Best Laid Plans, or Whatever

Diary

I'm proud to report that my mission is nearly accomplished.  Three months of slinging fried fish and frozen margaritas on Cape Cod have been a boon to my bank account and i'm now on the cusp of my New York move, i.e. the big one, i.e. the moment i've been anxiously awaiting for my entire life.  I'm about to fling myself into the unfathomable whirl of my dreams, about to begin climbing the towering ladder of my aspirations, and all sorts of other hyperbolic metaphors.  Romanticization aside, i'm moving and there's work involved.  Work that i've barely begun thinking about.  Work like planning an exact move date and renting a U-Haul.  Important things like finding a place to live and a job.  Oh sure, i brought out the boxes and mentally packed them, deciding which box would be for what.  And i've perused Craigslist.  And i gave my notice at work.  And, i know what needs doing.  (That's an important step!)  Unfortunately, i'm facing a bit of a catch-22 situation.  I need to live in the city to have a job and it seems as though i'll need a job before i can find a place to rent so that i can live in the city.  Fun, eh?  I'm not worried though.  My friends Shoshanna & Kyle have benevolently offered me a place to crash for a time and i'll just have to begin the job seeking and house hunting once i get there.  Plus, i think destiny may be at work, or something.

I'm not a complete slacker though; i have been preparing myself in other ways less tangible, but, i think, equally as important.  I've begun spiritual preparations.  Laugh if you must, deride me if you feel the impulse, but this move is more than a milestone.  Living in New York City is what i've spent the past decade dreaming of, writing about, & toiling towards.  The U-Haul, boxes, & endless to do lists may be necessary to deliver my possessions to the city, but my aim is not to merely reside there, but to exist there, to fully inhabit my New York life, an endeavor which requires far more than planning, an endeavor which requires Poetry.  So i've revisited Angels in America, queued up New York on my Netflix, & picked up some Walt Whitman:

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of 

Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see tham as they cross, the sun half and hour 

high,

A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see 

them,

Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to 

the sea of the ebb-tide.

3

It avails not, time nor place -distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations 

hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I 

was refreshed,

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I 

stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemmed pipes 

of steamboats, I looked.

As with any burgeoning love affair, i've flung my self fully into the fantasy & history of my new lover, to consume of it as much as i might before it consumes me.  And it will.  It has already begun.

Update:  I began this post last week, but injured my back and couldn't complete it till now.  Don't worry, i've since begun planning the nuts & bolts of my move.  Sept 12th is the date–somewhat ironic, no?

Eulogy

Diary

Christmas at Patricia’s, this is the first thing i think of when i think of Uncle Georgie; that and the sound of walnuts cracking.  Entering into Patricia’s warm kitchen from out of the cuttingly wet Cape Cod cold we were always greeted by the aroma of wonderful foods roasting in ovens.  Being Marcelines we never failed to linger, sneaking nibbles out of this or that as the ovens’ warmth thawed our bones–gods know there was rarely an overabundance of warmth between us.  For me, my yaya’s  absence was always sorely felt (she was my surrogate mother).   We’d stand around bickering about this and that and Uncle Georgie would take advantage of our distraction, making a silent bee line for the couch and the dish of mixed, shelled nuts on the coffee table.  In the kitchen, Patricia would shoo us out of her way with a good natured show of maternal bossiness.  In the living room, we’d find Uncle Georgie, covered in walnut crumbs, relishing his victory.   He’d worked his way through every single last walnut in the bowl.

He was actually my Great Uncle Georgie, but the Great part never stuck for me.  Not that he wasn’t a swell guy, but because of his almost adolescent naivety.  At first i was terribly frightened of him.  He was the spidery old man who sat all day behind a door at the end of the hall of my Grandmother’s house.  A door which leaked the scent of cigarettes and snack food.  To say that Uncle Georgie liked to keep to himself would be an understatement.  Uncle Georgie seemed to make solitude his life’s mission.  He was like some kind of perverse twentieth century anti-Narcissus, perpetually bound to smoke religiously, kneeling before his television screen and eating Wise potato chips.  This read as sinister to my seven year old psyche; today i pause to wonder how it reads in retrospect.  Was he content or hiding?  It’s likely he suffered ridicule, after all.  He was a mentally challenged child of a Greek immigrant family growing up on Cape Cod among Wasps and Baptists.  Maybe his withdrawal was a survival strategy?  It seems likely, but i’d like to think he just didn’t really care one way or the other, that he was satisfied with his life, that he didn’t need other people the way i seem to.

He was a kind man, in a put upon sort of way.  He could never say no; he could never not complain about having to do whatever had been asked either.  I was an attention starved, nightmare of an adolescent who never hesitated to ask a favor.  During the summer he’d give me rides to work in exchange for gas money.  I’d always commandeer the radio with contemporary Christian music and gospel, which he hated, but i was bratty enough to out scream his protests.  I feel bad now for treating him so badly and i regret never thanking him for helping me to execute my escape plan.

As a teen i had a fairly common fantasy: save money, get car, save more money, move out and live my own life free of my parents’ abuse.  I did escape and have, but for one or two rent free months living with my father and stepmother, managed to support myself for a decade as of this June past.  I have also managed to put myself through college and write some plays.  I wonder if i could’ve achieved as much without Uncle Georgie’s help.  How would i have made any money if i couldn’t find a way to work?

In late June my aunt called to tell me that the lung cancer he’d ignored since it was diagnosed in the 90’s had now metastasized to his brain, liver, and bones.  He had three to six months to live.  I promised myself i’d go see him in the hospital, but his death came in only six weeks and my promise was thwarted.  Well, thwarted is the wrong word.  I procrastinated away my chance to say goodbye and thank Uncle Georgie for his forbearance and aid.  This i regret since what kept me away was fear, not of death or of sickness, but of opening the door to the past.  You see, in my mind i had said goodbye to Uncle Georgie a decade ago as i fled from my painful familial ties and my tempestuous relationship with my father, as i began my quest to extricate my identity completely from the clan i had never really felt a part of in the first place, an impossible quest which required avoiding any and all contact with my past.

I wonder if Uncle Georgie was attempting a similar feat by hiding away the days of his life in his dark, smoky room.  I also wonder if he'd care at all if i had gone to see him, but that's something i always wonder when it comes to my family.  My escape was, after all, more of a retreat.  A retreat from my family, yes, but most of all a retreat from my own self-loathing doubt that my family cares for me at all, a painful doubt which i learned could be numbed by fooling myself that i was, in fact, rejecting them even though it was i who felt rejected.  This illusion could only be maintained by pretending they didn't exist at all and, even though i've vowed to stop running, i still find myself striving to maintain my illusions of familial liberation, most of the time quite unconsciously.  This very same subconscious compulsion kept me from fulfilling my promise to myself.  The fact is that Georgie would have cared, he had always cared.  I wish i had let him know that i cared too.

Pathways

Diary

We had bonded over a mutual friend.  Well, maybe bonded isn't exactly the right word.  We had met online, after all, and through Manhunt (essentially a seedy internet gay bar, for those of you not familiar).  Nevertheless, he knew Andy, the Andy of the past five years, the Andy of whom i have barely any knowledge at all.  So, i looked past the fact that the guy was unfortunate enough to be named Gene and was a little league pro wrestler.  I tolerated his cocky attitude too.  Having gotten his number wrong on my first attempt at real life contact I went back online to double check if i had the right digits.  This made him defensive and he quickly put me down for my egregious mistake.  "Learn how to dial a phone?", he answered when I finally got through.  The conversation continued its descent into stereotypical banality.  "The only thing gay about me is that i suck dick," he boasted in his conspicuously macho growl.  Nothing gets me going like stereotypical thinking, so i dropped the subject.  For some men his sort of attitude is a turn on, but not for me.  Yet we made plans to meet.  He knew Andy.

The Andy I had known was an exuberant, friendly freshman in high school.  He lived down the street from me and, like me, went to a fundamentalist, Jesus loving church (though not the same one).  We spent a lot of time bonding over Christian pop music on the bus and both fell in love with this little ditty:

Yes, i actually loved that song (it's not so bad) and even had a little dance routine to it.  (It was a strange time.  What can i say?)  Another quality we shared was our conspicuously friendly interest in females.  My memories of this period are elusive, but i remember that he was my best friend, my only friend, and it's possible that Andy was merely too nice to reject the bossy fat kid showering him with attention since, as with many things, i was relentless in my pursuit of his friendship.  It's more likely though that he felt as much of an affinity for me as i felt for him.

My path in life has often felt remarkably lonely.  A loneliness relieved now and then when i look to my left (or right) and see that there's someone traversing a path parallel to my own.  My path and Andy's aligned in ways far deeper than christian pop music fandom.   Both of us felt like outsiders and were haunted by troubles at home.  I had not had been cared for by my mother since I was seven; his mother suffered crippling chronic migraines, a malady she seemed to use as an excuse to shrink away from her children.  She often relied on Andy to help care for his many siblings; I was often saddled with caring for my step-siblings since my manic depressive father and stepmother were too busy rapidly deteriorating.  While our camaraderie of dysfunction failed to save us from our families it certainly made my path feel far less lonely.  It's nice having someone to wave to for a while, especially someone lovely as Andy was.  His handsome face and bubbling charm, his good natured openness were to me what the moon is to the tide.  What i really wanted was to hold him in my arms, but instead i strove to hold him accountable for his sins.  As his path veered away from mine, away from 'the lord', in a direction i feared, i strained to keep him near me by struggling to 'save him'.  In retrospect, my desperate attempts to keep him near likely pushed him further away.

The gay wrestling wonder's account of the Andy of today sounded familiar.  It seems that Andy is a bit of a party boy now.  Apparently the G-dubya Dubya and Andy lived together for a time, a time marked by theft, drugs, and discord, and were no longer in contact.  The story reminded me of Michael.  My best friend from age nine to fifteen and also my boyfriend.  Last time i saw Michael he was a strung out, homeless punk rocker standing before me, his black denim and leather cutting a slice of night out of a luminously sunny day, casting a bleak shadow upon the glowing, verdant Hyannis Village Green.  In the background a slick quartet of singers, a sort of gospel version of the Temptations, were belting away to a sparse, but enthusiastic, jesus loving crowd.  Michael had watched me introduce the singers on the bandstand.  And he appeared out of nowhere as i walked away from the podium.  I doubt i'll ever quake as furiously as i did in that moment ever again.  We hadn't seen each other for more than a year.  Our paths had diverged.  I had spent the summer of my seventeenth year planning a Christian cultural event called Cape Cod Outreach for Christ, an ambitious and grandiose thing for a seventeen year old.  Michael had spent his summer in the psych center, or so i'd heard.  We didn't speak for long, no more than ten minutes, probably far less, and i remember only but a single thing he said.  "I always knew you would be on stage someday."

I never saw him again.  We had been thick as thieves, but the gravity of our shared experience flouted its promise to keep our orbits aligned.  And if such gravity was not strong enough, our deep, but inexperienced love was certainly not either.  Though it did manage to hold a place for him within my heart.

I'm not sure why it upset me so much when G-dubya Dubya made me drive twenty minutes to meet him in a parking lot only to ditch me as quickly as he could, but i found myself foaming at the mouth.  I shouldn't have been.  I've experienced this before, not rarely, in my interactions with other internet personas, but this misfire aroused in me an immense rage, with an undercurrent of grief.  I reacted like a angered child, calling to leave a particularly nasty message and running home to 'block' him before he had the satisfaction of blocking me.  I am often shocked at my propensity for regression and this was a doozy.  But why?  Could it have been the crumbling of the bridge to my past our conversation had constructed that occurred as he drove away?  Or was it the cost of gas i had spent as i reasoned during my race home, the past and present roiling my mind?